After grandpa put down the phone, Gu Weijing returned to his bedroom.
Gu's calligraphy and painting shop is the ancestral property of the Gu family, and it certainly has an extraordinary significance to Gu Weijing.
But he has more things to care about now.
Gu Weijing turned on the computer and entered the entry "Singapore Art Biennale's award-winning works over the years".
The computer automatically jumps to the homepage of the Lion City Art Exhibition.
At the top is the introduction to the art exhibition.
The Lion City Art Biennale is a cutting-edge art exhibition that has emerged in Asia in recent years and has a short history.
It was held for the first time already after the millennium.
In the last period of Mr. Lee's rule, the founding father of Singapore, who had a life of ups and downs, set his sights on high-tech industries and tourism culture.
Historically, the Lion City was just an ordinary port city. During the wave of voyages to Southeast Asia in the 19th century, it became a transit place for boatmen, laborers, and maritime gold diggers. Compared with many historical cities in East Asia, it has no obvious advantages. .
Singapore needs to create a tourism business card of its own.
Therefore, large-scale international events such as the Lion City Art Biennale, Asia International Arts Festival, art fairs, F1 Singapore Grand Prix, etc. are held here one after another.
Now it is the seventh Art Biennale. It was originally supposed to be held two years ago, but due to the impact of the epidemic, it has been postponed to late this year.
Each year a committee of curators selects a specific theme for the Biennale, around which all works will be developed.
This year’s Singapore Art Biennale has a total of six curators, one Singaporean art connoisseur and five art critics from five continents.
Perhaps because the epidemic has made Singapore deserted, the theme selected by the curators this time is "hustle and bustle", which is translated as: "Hustle and Bustle in the World".
For art exhibitions, this can be said to be a theme where a hundred flowers bloom.
As long as you have inspiration, you can basically paint however you want.
This is a good thing for all painters who want to participate in exhibitions.
Gu Weijing remembers that a few years ago, the theme of a famous European art annual exhibition was chosen as "female artists", which caused some controversy.
There's nothing wrong with that, industry-wide.
Although it is not the same as it was hundreds of years ago or even a few decades ago, women were only seen as secondary roles as mannequins, vases, and tools to inspire male painters to create art.
But it is true that in the oil painting industry, to this day, female painters still have far less opportunities than male painters.
Therefore, some art critics have even suggested that everyone use gender-neutral names to submit their works in art exhibitions or art competitions.
Gu Weijing does not feel like many people that this theme is overkill.
But objectively speaking, art exhibitions with this theme, even if they do not restrict the submission of male painters, are indeed quite unfriendly to male painters.
After all, even if the curators and the jury don't understand what political correctness is, if too many male painters are selected to participate in the exhibition, it will be as if the greatest literary and artistic work ever produced on African soil was written by a white Danish aristocratic lady. The title is also called "Out of Africa" which is too darkly humorous.
Fortunately, there is no bias in this theme and everyone is on the same starting line.
Free submissions for the Biennale are solicited from all over the world.
Gu Weijing had applied for the registration form two weeks ago.
He moved the mouse to the column of works exhibited in previous years and randomly selected a work from the electronic album of previous exhibitions in 2012 with the theme "Life".
He activated the identification technique.
[Oil painting: "Whale Song of the Sea"]
[Sketch Technique: Lv.4 Profession·First Level (2678/5000)]
[Oil Painting Technique: Lv.3 Semi-Professional (964/1000)]
[Mood: careless]
…
[Oil painting: "Man Carrying a Pole"]
[Sketch Technique: Level 4 Profession Level 1 (512/5000)]
[Oil Painting Technique: Lv.4 Profession·First Level (1130/5000)]
[Mood: careless]
"This painting "The Man Carrying a Pole" won the third prize in the student category."
The first thing Gu Weijing clicked on was the electronic picture book of the student (amateur) group. After casually throwing in two skills, he had a rough judgment on the level of these amateur groups.
He found that in the process of appraising oil paintings, unlike Chinese paintings, the technical level and experience value of sketches would also pop up.
This was not beyond Gu Weijing's expectation.
Sketch itself is known as the foundation of all modern Western art schools. No matter what style of oil painting or watercolor you are, it is all based on lines and colors.
As long as it has to do with lines, sketching is absolutely inseparable as the basis.
Every great oil painter has worked hard on sketching.
Even if it is a Fauvist painter.
As you can tell from the name of this genre, the painting methods of Fauvist painters are wild enough.
They don't like rigid lines and are keen on using bright and strong colors. They often use paints squeezed directly from paint tubes and use straightforward and rough brushwork to create strong picture effects.
But Matisse, the founder of the company, was very good at sketching.
A special sketch exhibition was also held.
For oil painting, if you don’t even have the basics of sketching, you can deform whatever you draw. People think the girl you draw is a monkey and the apple you draw is a watermelon. How can you talk about creativity?
It should be because of the electronic picture album rather than the original work. The ideas of these people's painting and the separation of lines and colors are far less clear than his direct contact with the actual picture of "Kingfisher Singing Bamboo".
But it’s probably enough to see it.
To be fair, from a student's perspective, these people draw very well.
They are a few years older than Gu Weijing, but their proficiency in various techniques is almost the same as that of Gu Weijing, who has obtained the panel.
Even something is stronger than him.
Mr. Cao is right. Having a first-level professional skill is almost the threshold for participating in calligraphy and painting exhibitions.
If both sketching and oil painting have reached the level of a professional painter, then you should be able to stand on tiptoe and win awards.
Gu Weijing has given up the idea of continuing to use appraisal techniques on the paintings of the amateur group.
Because although the level of these people's paintings is indeed good, they are not so high that I can't understand them, and they are not so good that they have a sense of impact on him.
It's not worth continuing to spend the appraisal spell.
He switched to the master group picture album in the filter column above, which was also his goal for this competition.
The style of the entire page of the electronic album suddenly becomes completely different.
First of all, in the 2012 Singapore International Art Biennale, the works selected for exhibition by the master group were only three-quarters of those by the student group, but the number of pages in the album was more than three times that of the student group.
Each painting album in the master group has a dedicated artist introduction and review, and each painting is a dedicated homepage.
Any one of these works can be called excellent, with rigorous brushwork and exquisite painting techniques.
[Title of work: "Flying Birds·Seawater·Red Sun"]
[Sketch technique: Level 2 of lv.5 profession]
[Watercolor Painting Technique: Lv.5 Professional Level 2]
[Mood: Simple work]
[Remarks: Techniques that are one level higher than the host's highest skill cannot accurately display the experience bar and will cause mental fatigue. Please use identification techniques with caution]
Gu Weijing just casually looked at a watercolor painting using his appraisal technique, and felt a certain amount of mental depression due to the large number of color separations.
This is a side effect of forcibly analyzing works that are higher than one's own.
Fortunately, this uncomfortable feeling is only fleeting.
"Two second-level professions." Gu Weijing smacked his lips.
Painting appreciation is a very subjective matter;
Even if this kind of art exhibition has professional committees and art connoisseurs for selection, it is inevitable that excellent works will be buried, or mediocre works will be shortlisted by luck.
But generally speaking, painters who can participate in the master group are at least on the same level.
This gouache painting is not good enough to win an award. If you want to participate in the master group exhibition, it should be at least of a similar level.
"It's not an easy task to be promoted to the second level of two professions."
Gu Weijing felt the pressure.
He now has two first-level career skills, and it seems that he is not far from the second-level career.
But the account cannot be calculated like this.
Upgrading each skill requires 5,000 experience points, and the two skills are worth 10,000, which means he needs to spend at least 100,000 US dollars to buy tickets to the art exhibition.
Moreover, in art exhibitions, especially overseas art exhibitions, the requirements for Chinese paintings that want to be exhibited are much higher.
It may take a third-level professional, or even higher, to impress those overseas judges with the impact of Chinese painting alone.
However, it is not easy to improve your painting skills.
But painting has never been just a rigid job that simply tests technique.
And emotions.
Gu Weijing found a particularly interesting painting among the shortlisted works of this year's master group.
It was a gloomy oil painting.
The name of this oil painting is "The Fisherman". It uses the pointillism technique, using very small color dots arranged close to each other for coloring.
Pointillism is a relatively complex oil painting technique.
It requires that the color points on the entire painting be closely arranged, but there must be no overlap, which is similar to the principle of light color mixing on a display screen.
The author of this painting obviously did not do a good job at this point.
With Gu Weijing's current vision, he could easily see that the other party had a lot of colored dots stained and dirty together without activating his skills.
This painter's painting skills are average in the amateur group, and can only be called poor in the master group.
What really attracted Gu Weijing's attention was that even in an electronic album, compared to other works, this painting obviously had a different vitality.
Gu Weijing launched the art of calligraphy and painting appraisal.
Twisted sea water, boiling waves, fishermen fighting with the sea...
The sound of wind, rain, sea water, and fishermen's groans blended into a sigh that passed by Gu Weijing's ears.
[Oil Painting: "Fisherman"]
[Sketch Technique: Lv3 Semi-Professional (813/1000)]
[Oil Painting Technique: Lv4 Profession·First Level (1220/5000)]
[Emotion: Feeling something in my heart]
"No wonder it gives people different feelings. The emotion of this painting actually reaches [feeling in the heart]!"
This is the first time Gu Weijing has seen a work with an emotional evaluation above "a simple work".
Having an emotional panel, he knows how difficult it is to maintain a concentrated emotion throughout the entire process of painting a painting, let alone the evaluation of a higher level of "feeling in the heart".
[Painter: Tomás Santisima (Venezuela), researcher at the National Museum of Fine Arts of Venezuela]
[2012 "Life"·Singapore International Art Biennale, finalist works of the master group]
Gu Weijing saw a short line of text at the link below, which seemed to be the evaluation given to this painting by the curatorial organizing committee.
[The artist's line expression is not precise enough, and his oil painting techniques are still immature. But the painter showed the spirit of fighting against the sea and the vitality of the fisherman's tenacious struggle. The artist depicts the spirit of a tough guy fighting the ocean from the perspective of a bystander, and the entire painting gives the judges a unique perspective on the ocean. 】
[Therefore, we specially selected the finalists for the exhibition of the master group. 】
"Either it is the painting skills, or it is the emotion that makes people shine. The two must account for at least the same amount."
Gu Weijing nodded.
Painting skills can be improved by experience, but emotions can only be improved by life experience. Having good emotional expression has always been the only way for a great painter.
Emotions are even more important than pure techniques. The third step of the career mission on his system panel is also related to emotions.
[Serial Mission: First Look - The Way of the Profession (Final Mission)]
[Current task: Complete a work of any theme with a length of more than 8 inches, and reach the emotional rating-feeling and above. 】
[The ultimate reward of the chain mission: a random legendary skill]
"Legendary skills?"
When Gu Weijing just saw this skill description, if he said he wasn't impressed, it must be a lie.
Although I don’t know the specific content of the reward, the words “legendary level” alone illustrate the preciousness of this skill.
Menzel's painting skills, which made him prosperous in the illustration world, were only perfect. It was hard for him to imagine what kind of skills could be called a legend by the system.
But as the final reward of this chain of tasks, the difficulty of completing it is much higher than the first two.
The first two items are either improving skills to reach the first level of a profession or meeting the number of orders received on Fiverr, these are tangible requirements.
The 8-inch page is not that big, but it can't be finished in a few minutes. How to maintain a warm emotion for a long time... Gu Weijing had just figured out some tricks in the orphanage.
"It would be great if the system could give itself more tasks."
Thinking of this,
He reopened the panel and stared at a certain line of skill details under [Calligraphy and Painting Appraisal Technique].
[Special Effect 2 (Soul Sensing): During the process of appreciating the master's paintings, there is a probability of triggering a limited mission. Note: Appreciating works that are too advanced for your current aesthetic attainments may cause additional mental burden on the host, please use skills with caution]
"In the process of appreciating the paintings of masters, is there a chance that a limited mission will be triggered?"
Gu Weijing suddenly realized something. He seemed to be able to actively trigger the task now.
It just depends on what kind of work is considered a masterpiece.
Gu Weijing thought for a moment and found the "Hundred Flowers" painting by Professor Lin Tao's junior sister Tang Ning on his mobile phone.
He activated his skills.
This time, the mental impact was much greater than when I just appreciated the watercolor paintings.
He felt a numbness in his brain, a feeling of electric shock all over his body, his head ached and heavy, his head was dizzy, and he even had slight hallucinations. He felt like there were countless flowers blooming and withering on his body.
[Title of work: "Hundred Flowers"]
[Chinese Painting Techniques: lv.7 Master Level 1]
[Mood: Simple work]
"The first level of master, that is, the third level of lv.6 professional painter and above is the first level of master. But what about my mission?"
Gu Weijing closed his eyes and rested his mind for a few minutes. He waited until the numbness on the top of his head subsided slightly before looking at the panel in front of him.
This painting by the painter Tang Ning itself is a work with virtuosic attributes. It is not surprising that the emotional value only received the evaluation of "Simple Work".
Just as Gu Weijing speculated, this Chinese painting is the most skillful work he has ever seen so far, reaching Level 7.
But no new tasks appear on the panel.
"Either it's a matter of probability, or it's just that I've just reached the level of a master, and it's not enough to trigger the mission."
Gu Weijing did not give up, and used his calligraphy and painting appraisal skills on a simple commissioned work on Fiverr that he painted with the skill of Master Menzel.
Probably because of my own work, there was no mental impact this time.
But the picture does not present a line structure decomposed in the mind like other works.
Only a dry panel emerged.
[Title of work: "Untitled Internet Illustration"]
[Sketch Technique: lv.9 Master Level 3 (Limited Experience)]
[Mood: Simple work]
"It's still not good. Is it because the content is not complex enough, or is it because the painting without the help of Menzel's skills has no soul of its own?"
Gu Weijing licked his lips.
He was unwilling to give up just like that, and a very bold idea appeared in his mind.
Gu Weijing still couldn't restrain his curiosity.
He now not only wants to trigger the system's task, but also because he wants to know how far the greatest painters in human history have reached in the system's evaluation.
Gu Weijing had several options in mind.
Otherwise, take a taxi to the mural restoration site now and take a look at the "Picture of Worshiping the Buddha and Protecting the Dharma" restored by Mr. Cao.
This is the authentic work of the top painter that he can personally come into contact with now.
If it is an online electronic album, he is more inclined to his favorite Impressionist works.
Although well-known works such as "Mona Lisa" or "Night Watch" have become part of popular culture.
But when it comes to personal preferences, Gu Weijing prefers the Impressionist style of painting.
Traditional Chinese culture influenced RB painting, and Japanese painting influenced Impressionism. East and West merged, and the world's art trends mixed with each other on a small piece of oil painting paper.
Especially the representative painter of Impressionism, Ray Arnold.
In his early years, the artist was trained in painting oriental porcelain and traditional screens, and his works reflect the effect of flying cotton wool similar to porcelain paintings.
Warm, passionate and bright.
It satisfied his imagination of the beauty of all oil paintings.
pick one of two,
Gu Weijing knew that appreciating the works of a painter of this level would definitely bring a huge mental burden to himself.
I can only choose one, and even a painter may not be able to analyze it.
After much hesitation, he chose Renoir's masterpiece.
For no other reason than curiosity killed the cat. After all, Mr. Cao is a living painter, and he is likely to become Mr. Cao's disciple. He has plenty of time to listen to Mr. Cao's painting experience.
He just wanted to take advantage of the convenience of the system and experience the pinnacle of Impressionism across a hundred years.
"The Ball at the Moulin de la Moulin," Reano."
Gu Weijing entered the entry.
